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We built it for the seven-second joke

Create Colab is a small team making a video meme editor that is quicker than the joke you’re trying to make.

How it started

The first version of Create Colab was a weekend hack. One of us had a seven-second clip of a dog walking straight into a sliding door and wanted to add one line of text and a record scratch. The desktop editor took four minutes to open, asked about frame rates and sequence settings, and needed half an hour of exporting and re-exporting before the caption lined up with the bump. By then the group chat had moved on.

Editing the meme took longer than the joke lasted. So we built the smallest editor that could do the job: drop in a clip, type the top and bottom text, add the sound, export. Friends started asking for the link, then for zoom punches, then for templates of whatever was going around that week.

That is still the whole product. Every feature has to help someone make a funny video faster, or it waits.

What we believe

The rules we use when deciding what to build next.

Space
The preview should never make you wait
Timing is the joke. You should be able to scrub, nudge a caption by a few frames and replay it straight away, so previews run in your browser and the heavy rendering waits until you export.
T
Defaults should already be funny
White Impact text, a thick outline and captions that land on the beat. Most people never open the settings panel, and they shouldn’t have to.
Esc
Your clips are yours
We process uploads to render your video, and that’s all. We don’t sell personal data, we don’t run ad trackers, and exports are deleted after 24 hours unless you save the project.
F
Free should be useful
The Free plan comes with real templates, real sounds and five exports a day. The watermark is small. Paid plans add quality and range, not the basics.

How we pick the weekly Top 10

The list goes up every Monday. Here is what happens in the week before.

Tuesday to Thursday
Collect
We track which formats people remix most in Create Colab and which ones keep appearing in the feeds we follow. Something that is everywhere but only for a day gets noted and then usually dropped.
Friday
Rebuild and try out
Each pick becomes a template with clean timing, caption slots and a matching sound. Then someone on the team who hasn’t seen it before makes a meme with it. If that takes more than two minutes, we fix the template.
Monday
Publish
Ten templates go to the top of the gallery. Last week’s picks stay in the gallery. Nobody pays to get on the list, and we don’t accept sponsored entries.

The team

Eight people, mostly remote, one shared channel full of half-finished memes. Each person’s favorite template is shown next to their role.

Editor and timeline
Three engineers who own the browser editor: the canvas, captions, the timeline and the motion effects. They obsess over frame-accurate trimming.
Favorite Split landing
Rendering
Two engineers who run the export servers, keep the queue short in the evenings, and make sure files are deleted on schedule.
Favorite Cargo ship lean
Templates and sound
Two editors who build the weekly Top 10, curate the sound library and try every template before it ships.
Favorite Plate drop
Support
One person who answers every email, reads every bug report and turns the repeat questions into fixes.
Favorite Spare scooter